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Revered Australian power surfer from Sydney, Australia; a teenage phenomenon in the mid-1980s who suffered a physical and mental breakdown in the early '90s, then rebounded in spectacular fashion to win the 1999 world championship.

Occhilupo was born (1966) and raised in the industrial Sydney suburb of Kurnell, near Cronulla, the son of an Italian-born civil engineer who'd emigrated to Australia as a young adult. He began surfing in 1974 at age nine, and through his early teenage years was g...